by Charles Dean
Miller had wanted to combine the parties now that Lee was there, but Lee shot down the idea as soon as it popped up. He knew that, while it might help the recruits with experience and teach them to act cohesively, he didn’t want a single unit. He wanted two units. He had learned his lesson about believing that his little four-man posse could take on everything alone, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t want the flexibility of having a small elite unit surrounding him. After his conversations with Alexander, he had come to the conclusion that he needed to make use of the extra manpower as much as he could. Before, he would have sent them back to town the second he had been rescued. Now, however, he wanted to take advantage of a small, skilled group of fighters as much as he could.
As Masha’s father had once said over a chess game, ‘Some of the sword is lost during the sharpening, but without the whetstone, the weapon will never serve its purpose.’ He had to accept that, in order to keep the blade sharp and able to cut through his foes and defend Satterfield, he had to grind it. And that would inevitably lead to deaths.
Every decision I make will lead to someone dying though. Lee took in a deep breath and struggled to accept this fact. He had wanted more time to process it all in the other world where he had emotional support from Masha. He wished for more time now so that he could collect his thoughts and steel his nerves, but that had been taken from him. All he could do was press forward, shaky nerves and all.
The group managed to get six hours of rest in the middle of the day. Lee didn’t want to risk building a fire, and they spent half an hour covering thick tarps with fallen leaves so that their little napping spot would be invisible in the woods unless someone came dreadfully close. He was happy to find Amber still snuggled up to him, even with others being able to see them, clinging to him just like she had done the night before. Thankfully, there were no tears this time. It was just a cozy, familiar comfort on a laid-out sleeping roll that felt a million times better than a dirt floor.
They woke up a few hours past noon and then pressed on, each group practicing their formations and strategies every time they came across another group of monsters. Lee spent his time teaching Amber and Ling to flank an enemy's sides. He would rush in first with his shield raised, and then Miller would come in a few feet behind with his spear. The two would isolate and pin down as many melee targets as they could while Amber and Ling fanned out in opposite directions and stayed at range to attack the enemy. The formation was solid against an even number of foes that were significantly weaker than they were, but it only worked well against five or more if Ling and Amber were able to intercept the opponents who broke off and charged before they reached them. No matter how hard Lee tried, he wasn’t able to tie down more than two opponents of his caliber at a time, and Miller was only able to burst-kill one before getting stuck with one himself. It was a limitation to the formation, which Lee called Umbrella Rain.
There was also another issue with the formation: Amber’s range attacks. In a burst of inspiration, Lee had decided to give Amber a new set of daggers when he had realized that glass weapons made excellent disposable tools. The group had crossed a stream with sandy banks, and Lee had taken the opportunity to both collect a ton of extra sand as well as begin making throwing daggers. Amber’s aim was horrible at first, needing nearly three throws to hit a target 10 meters away, but over the course of a day, she managed to reduce that to only one miss every five throws. It was a pretty good rate of improvement for someone who had no experience at all with such weapons, but it came at a price.
In one particular fight, for instance, Lee had been doing his best to hold down two lizard-like humanoids wielding swords when Amber moved in to support him. She had tried to fling four daggers in rapid succession, but she only hit half of what she had been aiming for. The initial two landed in the enemy closest to her, puncturing its side and right thigh. The third one missed and the fourth one, to Amber’s shock, landed squarely in Lee’s left butt-cheek. It was an honest mistake, but that didn’t stop Lee from wanting to curse and yell the moment the dagger struck. He wanted to chew her out for what was, quite literally, the biggest pain in his rear end, but he couldn’t. He was the one who had encouraged her to make the swap to throwing weapons, and she needed the practice. The fact that she was practicing in real combat against live targets spoke to just how necessary it was for her to get better. This was the only way that he could think of to keep her safe without forcibly removing her from the battlefield--something that she would never allow.
Thankfully, by the end of the second day, Amber started to improve. Even Miller, who had kept his distance from both of the girls while they learned the new formation and worked on their maneuvers, decided that he was ready to break his brooding silence and risk coming closer.
“You gonna tell me where we’re headed?” the Firbolg asked.
“Maybe. You gonna tell me what’s been eating you?” Lee returned a question for a question. He didn’t have anything to hold over Miller as a conversational bargaining chip, so he could only hope that Miller’s curiosity was enough to get him to open up. Who would have thought I’d ever want a giant, muscle-covered comic-book-style justice lover to open up about anything? But he did want that. He wanted things to return to the status quo, or what had been status quo before his arrest, as soon as possible.
“Nothing. Nothing is eating me,” Miller responded, his voice dripping with ire. “I’m just wondering why we’re not returning to Satterfield to work on our army so we can kill that Herald. The longer that fiend is alive, the more people he’s going to hurt and the more families he is going to break in two. Nothing is eating me, but he is going to eat a beautiful land and destroy all that is good and holy. We must deliver him to justice, so why are we headed this way when Satterfield is in the opposite direction?”
“You know this Herald, don’t you?” Lee had a hunch that this wasn’t just Miller’s usual vindictive anger. “You’ve met this one before, haven’t you?”
“I . . .” Miller was about to deny it but then just went silent. The quiet persisted for several minutes as they continued to walk, and then he said, “I knew him. I knew him very well.”
“Do you know the god that he serves? Miller, I hate to pry, but any and all information you can spare would be good. If we’re going to defeat him, I need to know it all.” Lee could only assume that vengeance was the proverbial carrot that would get Miller to talk at this point. As much as he hated using it on his friend, he needed all the information he could get.
“He serves Deigha, the Firbolg Goddess of Ice. Since you’re a Herald, you probably already know that there are myriad deities taking part in this skirmish, but unlike most of the gods that players run into, this one is still active. She’s not only active, she’s violent, manipulative and ambitious. She rules over half of my home world with an iron fist, constantly preaching about the superiority of her bloodline since she placed her descendants into the positions of monarchs, feudal lords or nobility in every city across every nation that worshipped her. The purer and closer one’s blood is to hers, the higher up one is on the chain.”
Lee was starting to understand exactly what was going on with this particular goddess as Miller spoke. He said, “And since she’s a Firbolg goddess . . . the nobility and monarchs . . .” He trailed off rather than finish voicing his thoughts.
“Right. They’re all Firbolgs too. They’re all big, over-sized Firbolgs, each and every one of them. It’s a point of pride. They brag about the purity of their blood and how they are above everyone else because they have ‘god’s blood’ running through their veins. It’s what they use to oppress other groups, other people and other races. Races like Humans.” Miller punctuated the end of his sentence with a spit.
Lee couldn’t even normally pick up on subtle cues, and he felt like his Charisma stat was at work when he followed up by saying, “And one of those people they oppressed was someone close to you.”
“My fiancée,” Miller answered
with a sullen nod. “She . . . Kate . . . was a Human--one of the frail and tiny ones like you.”
Lee held his protest at the insult in the back of his throat. He knew Miller meant no harm. He probably did look frail and weak to Miller. Everything the giant did resonated with strength and power, but Lee had to think his way around fights. He had to rely more on skill than strength to survive, a point that this world’s Firbolg Herald often seemed to stress about Humans. “How did you end up meeting?” Lee asked, letting his Charisma auto-pilot dictate the conversation rather than try to milk Miller for information right away.
“Funnily enough, she worked at a church,” Miller laughed. “One of the churches my family had set up. Because of my . . . status . . . I had to tour those churches once a week and deliver the good message. I had to talk about how great Deigha was, how powerful her bloodline was and how Deigha’s majesty would protect the town and defeat all of its enemies. Because all of the servants were from the lower races of Farann, this meant that I had to deal with the Humans organizing and laboring away at the events. It was, as I am ashamed to admit, what I used to think of as the worst part of my week.
“That is, until I met her around my nineteenth birthday.” Miller’s pace slowed down and his eyes glazed over. He wasn’t even looking at Lee as he talked at this point: his eyes were staring up and to the right. It seemed like he was looking at some important point in the sky that only he could see as he talked. “She was everything I was told to hate about a Human. Instead of being strong, tall and sturdy, she was short, dainty and fragile. Whereas we were told to be cold and calculative, she was kind and sincere, and she helped everyone around her. She even lacked every semblance of pride or arrogance, taking all scoldings and insults with a smile. Even among the other Humans working at the church, she was like a lone flower trying to stick her head up in a sea of redwoods. But, for some reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off her no matter how hard I tried.
“Which I did, of course. I tried my best never to look at her since I knew the feeling was wrong. I actually went out of my way to avoid her, and when we had to interact, I would curse her with the worst insults I could think of, only to have her smile back at me with those beautiful, tiny eyes, never failing to maintain her smile as she returned every insult with a compliment, every shout with a pleasant tone. It was infuriating. I ended up going out of my way to think of how to rile her up and anger her, spending each day out of church planning some prank, some mischief, or some clever remark that might upset her.”
“And then you started going out of your way to see her more too, didn’t you?” Lee asked, stifling a chuckle as he thought about a nineteen-year-old lovestruck Miller shouting insults at a pretty girl to show his affection as if he were a five-year-old on the playground.
“Indeed. And it didn’t stop there. I started thinking of ways to see her away from the church too. I’d contact the church and send her out to projects I was conducting. I would work her to the bone on anything I could, from our housing projects to our farms. If anyone needed something from me, I called her as if she were my only Human servant. She was my butler, my maid, my courier, my construction worker . . . I made her do every task I could think of. This lasted for a month or two, but she still refused to complain. If I woke her up in the middle of the night to sweep a road on the other side of the town, she just said, ‘yes,’ ‘please’ and ‘as you wish.’ It was sometime in the middle of the second month of me doing this that I started relying on her.
“I used her so much that she became indispensable to me. I felt endeared to her in a way that all the anger and teachings of a thousand years couldn’t work out of my blood. I would call her to help with a restaurant and then make her sit and eat a meal with me, saying that she had to test the food for poison or make sure that it was up to taste. I would call her to the park to rake up the leaves, claiming they were an eyesore to the good Firbolg people, but then I would ‘accidentally’ bump into her and just happen to be heading the same direction so that we could walk together.
“I realized that I liked her far beyond her cute and adorable gaze and well past those pretty eyes and smile. I liked the way that, unlike anyone in my family or circle of friends, she listened to me. She clung to every word I said as if I were the only person in her universe when I talked to her. Even if we were taught to be cold and calculating, I liked how she would always put aside everything to help out others when no one was watching. I liked how she would draw pictures of places that never existed during her free time, saying that, as long as she could imagine a world, it was every bit as real as it needed to be. I even liked the way she moved when she walked outside on a sunny day . . . It was as if she were doing a slow and cheerful dance.”
“What did you do? How did you make the first move?” Lee asked. “I’m assuming that, with the social structure, she never would.”
“Indeed. She couldn’t. Any member of a subrace caught trying to woo a Firbolg, especially one from the nobility, would find themselves caught and killed quickly.”
“So how did you get around that?”
“It was during a work trip. We were setting up a new warehouse overseas, and I couldn’t find it in myself to be away from her for more than a day, much less the three months that it would take to get everything operational and running for a business. There were plenty of servants in the new town, so everyone expected me to just go there myself, but I complained to my father. I said that I didn't want to waste my time teaching a new servant how I liked to be waited on, and he told me I could go to the church and request her--which I did.
“I didn’t know it at the time, but she was furious about it. She was taking care of her mother, and since I dragged her away from her hometown, it meant that she had to leave her mother in her younger brother’s hands. It actually turned out to be a blessing since it gave him a level of structure and discipline that he didn’t have before, so she did eventually forgive me.”
“And the trip?” Lee asked, cutting off the tangent at the start.
“Ah, yeah. Well, the trip probably wouldn’t have been the last straw if there weren’t complications. On the second night there, when she was bringing me my food at the inn, an ice storm hit that made traveling incredibly dangerous. I could have made her go through the hail and risk her life like so many other nobles would have done in my shoes, but when I saw the fist-sized rocks of ice raining down upon the roads and forcing even the bravest of men inside, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The inn didn’t have any other rooms, so I told her to just stay with me for the night, that she could sleep on the couch . . . except, well, we didn’t sleep. I ended up staying up the entire night talking to her, but this time, I was doing the listening. The more she spoke, the more entranced I became. By the time I regained my senses, it was already nine in the morning. She got up to leave, saying she was going to go fetch breakfast, but when she stood up, still captivated from the night before, I kissed her.
“How did she end up taking it?”
“Poorly,” Miller laughed. “She said she wanted to, but it wasn’t right--that it wasn’t proper--and rushed out the door. The rest of that week, of that month, was spent with me chasing her. I had to have her; I had to be with her. I ate every meal in my room so that we could be together as a couple without people judging me for being a nobleman talking to a Human. I had her carry little things so we could walk together through parks and down scenic routes without it looking like it was a date. It was magical, and it came with a feeling I didn’t think I’d ever experience before I met her.”
“Was it only noblemen who didn’t eat with Humans? Did other Firbolgs?”
“Yeah, others did. The poor especially associated with Humans. There were always mixed-race children sprouting out of the woodwork, but no one paid them any heed. They were considered just above Humans, but both the proper Firbolgs and most Humans rejected them, so that small social boost didn’t do them any good.”
“I see. So, what happened next
?” Lee asked.
“Well, nothing happened next. It just continued on and on with her returning my affections more each day and me being less able to stand being away from her. By the time the business trip ended, I just had my father schedule me another one. We spent the next four years together that way,” Miller said, smiling fondly at the memory. “Then, against her better judgment, I got her to agree to marry me.”
“That . . .” Lee gulped. “That doesn’t sound good at all.”
“It should have been. It was the happiest day of my life. I called my father to tell him the news, and I thought he’d be furious and throw me out. I was prepared to work a decade to get him to accept her, but all he did was tell me that he couldn’t be happier for me. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe my ears. He insisted that I bring her home for the holidays so that he could meet her. I had to make sure that he knew she was a Human over the call, but he said it didn’t matter, that he would love her as a daughter no matter what. She was even more surprised than I was when I told her what he had said. To this day, I can still remember the dance that she did-- a cute little peppy step while singing about how happy she was.
“I can still . . .” Miller paused, swallowing so hard that Lee could hear the saliva squeeze down his throat. He looked over at his big friend to see his eyes red, watering and bloodshot and decided to not push the story further and let him finish at his own pace.
A minute later, Miller picked the story back up. “She was beautiful and happy and foolish. We both were. While we were planning the vacation home from our latest work trip, my father had called the church and notified Deigha’s high priest of everything. When we got home, we had no idea. We drank to our heart’s content, everyone was nice to us, and it seemed like the perfect day. My soon-to-be-wife was nearly crying from happiness since my family’s acceptance was her biggest concern. It was the largest potential roadblock in our life, and she had spent more than two weeks pacing nervously, thinking about how to handle everything if one of my parents didn’t like her. I didn’t know at the time why she was worried. To me, there was no way anyone wouldn’t love her.